Love Is Strength
by Emily31594
Summary: My hopes for Regina. A reaction fic that isn't an easy fix-it but should at least put some cooling balm on the wounds. Edit after writing: Okay so maybe it ends up being fix-it, but you have to work for it.


My hopes for Regina. A reaction fic that isn't an easy fix-it but should at least put some cooling balm on the wounds. Edit after writing: Okay so maybe it ends up being fix-it, but you have to work for it.

She finds her way to a back corner, away from everyone, where she can hide. The last time she stood here, it was because Henry had looked right through her, and as a mother she wants to think that that was worse. But it wasn't, because she had known she could get his memories back, had known deep down it would be okay, and right now everything is the opposite of okay. Right now, she can hardly breathe because she's afraid that if she does, sobs will wrack her body so hard she'll fall apart. She's holding herself up against the wall, barely, with one weak hand.

_Villains don't get happy endings, _echoes in her head and she wants to hit herself, pound that phrase out until there's nothing in her mind, and it's blank, empty, etherized, gone. It makes sense, she thinks. He'll get the happy ending he was supposed to. She'll not have ruined his life by running away from that tavern. Roland will have his real mother.

But a small part of her, the part these short…God has it only been weeks?…weeks with him have brought out knows he would tell her not to think like that, to give herself a second chance. But it's hard, too hard, she can't breathe, and she slides down the wall with her head in her hands, and makes the mistake of glancing down the hallway to where he'd said that to her, where he'd held her close and made her think that maybe, just maybe, she'd earned a second chance at happiness. And the sobs start in earnest.

"Mom?"

She looks up and knows she must look awful, can't manage anything but a broken sob. And her son, her beautiful, beautiful son who told her she wasn't a villain sinks down on the floor next to her and pulls her head onto his shoulder. "I love you, mom." And how has he grown into this wise young man before her eyes? She pulls him to her chest and buries her face in his hair, and takes a real breath for the first time in a long time, and the sobs turn into quieter shaking and she'll be okay. It's okay.

A few minutes later, Tinkerbell finds them, and the first thing Regina wants to do is throw her against a wall, but she knows, she's so aware, Tinkerbell told her herself that this is _her _fault for always ruining her own happy endings. The fairy looks frantic, like she's been running around trying to find Regina, and she must sense that the Queen doesn't want empty words right now about love and redemption, and so she merely sits down next to them, and takes Regina's hand, and after a few minutes says, "Don't you dare believe for one second that you deserve this."

And Regina thinks back to what she'd said to Zelena in the jail, and echoes, her voice empty but gravelly from crying, "We don't always get the life we think we deserve." She doesn't know what's possessed her that she's letting Tinkerbell of all people hold her hand, can't believe she's been sobbing openly in front of her son for the last twenty minutes, and she realizes with a jolt that this short time she had with…and she can't think his name, or she'll crumble, fall apart…with _him…_must've been enough for some corner of her mind to regain hope in the possibility of a happy ending, and damn him, because she'd thought he was going to be part of it, and damn him because being a villain was so much easier. It hurts so much less to pretend nothing can touch you, to trick yourself into believing you don't love and never will, and perhaps more horribly, to trick yourself into believing no one will ever love you.

And it's hard, so hard, but she swears to herself, today, right now, to choose the light instead of the darkness. To try to let herself feel loved, to let their touches and their words soothe and not grate. To let the relationship that's crushing her heart right now do something also to strengthen it. _Stronger than ever. _And she lets out a sob and her hands ache for his, her lips burn for the kiss they'd shared not an hour ago, and what makes her most angry is that she can't find it in herself to be…angry. She's just desperately, desperately sad.

She closes her eyes and tilts her head back against the wall, and for some reason she hears _Love again_ and she wants to cry back to him _I did, Daniel. I did, and look where it got me. _Her son snuggles closer then, and she remembers that love comes in more forms than one. _You just need to find a reason to keep going_.

Her heart aches and aches all the more now that some of the red has returned and the black, faded. It had been too late, all of those years ago, for the Queen, _The Queen is dead. Long live the Evil Queen. _and she hates to admit it, but now, it's the opposite that's true. _The Evil Queen is dead. Long live Regina, the girl destined to have a resilient heart. _But all that that means, she realizes brokenly, is that something must always arise to crush it anew.

And several months later, the hardest months of her life because she has to remind herself every day, every hour, every minute, of the choice she made in that awful green hallway, she's glad she remembered. She's tried to stay far, far away from him, but the timeline was so wrecked, they'd needed her help, needed her knowledge and all looked at her with trust and with a deep pity that made her tense and frustrated and made her choice always harder.

He's had to say goodbye to his wife again, because she didn't belong here, never did, and Marian's made the same choice now that she did all of those years ago, her life or Roland's, and Regina knows, as a mother, that it was never a choice. She's let him mourn, again, stayed away, reminded herself he has always been in love with his wife and always will be, that his time with her had served its purpose was over. That the mother of your child isn't someone you can forget.

Her doorbell rings a few weeks after time has returned to its proper place, and she goes to answer, expecting one of Snow's infuriating gifts of a home-cooked meal, or Tinkerbell with an invitation to drinks, and hopes, at best, that it will be Henry for a surprise visit.

But it's him. Her heart leaps into her throat and her lungs have to remind her, painfully, that they need air.

"I'm in love with you," he says without preamble.

"I…" and words are so inadequate, always have been with him.

He grabs her jacket collar and seals his lips onto hers, and it will take her a few days to realize it's the exact reverse of their first kiss.

They stumble back into the house, or really, she does, and she realizes that she's crying, wet tears streaming down her face as she starts to sob.

"Hey…" he whispers, and he pulls her to him, swaying with her to calm her breathing, smoothing her hair. She'd forgotten, before him, in the thirty-odd years since there's been someone around to do it, how wonderful it felt to be held. These past few months without it have been torture, and this feels like coming home.

"I'm so sorry about your—" she tries to get out through sobs.

"I know. Me too." He kisses her temple. "But that was my past; _you, _Regina, are my future. I've thought a lot about it these last few weeks and I…well, I'm in love with you," he repeats. He pushes her hair back behind her ear. "The person I am now, with everything he went through, is in love with _you_, and the person you are after everything you've lived through. Timing works out the way it's meant to."

Her glassy eyes meet his, which aren't doing any better, and suddenly they're kissing again, more fervently. Her teeth are scraping against his lip and he's backing her up until she's against the wall, his hand cradling her head and twisted in her hair, and their tongues are pushing against each other, and they kiss and kiss and kiss until she can't breathe, but she doesn't care, this is the best kind of not being able to breathe, so much better than all the others.

His hand grasps her waist and moves up her side torturously slowly, and she thinks her hand is probably—definitely—grasping his arm hard enough to bruise.

He tears away to gasp at air, and she takes the distraction as an opportunity to flip them around, so that he's the one cornered against the wall, and places warm, open-mouthed kisses down his neck until he whimpers and gasps out her name. She looks into his eyes at the way he says _Regina_, with just the right amount of wonder, and the blue depths of them are so vulnerable, she feels like she sees her own feelings reflected in them.

"You were so good to me these last few months," he whispers, "and I…I betrayed the trust you gave me in opening yourself up to me in the first place. I'm sorry."

She shakes her head, and tears up, because he needs to understand. They're so close, sharing the same breath, their eyes locked together. "I did that because of what I learned when Henry told me I could defeat Zelena, when you told me I deserved a second chance." She puts a hand on his jaw and smiles tearfully. "I chose love. The love you had given me, if only for a little while, over hate."

And it's his turn, now, to find that words are inadequate.

He puts his hand on her chest, right above her heartbeat, his eyes never leaving hers. She puts one hand on top of his. This time, when their lips meet it's less frantic, and somehow that makes her feel it more deeply. She notices the texture of his lips, the scratch of the stubble beneath her fingertips as she caresses his jaw, the way his breath hitches when she leans in closer, the pad of his thumb running back and forth against her shoulder blade. She savors every detail, even more than she did, _before_.

She breaks the kiss to bury her face in his neck and she almost laughs at herself because she can feel the tears falling again, but this time, they're happy tears. She thinks of Henry that horrible night at Granny's, and how she has people to hold her while she cries, and finally puts to rest the poison her mother had planted in her about love. It is weakness, certainly, but in that weakness there is an immeasurable strength stronger than the strength that does not love. Regina realizes after a moment that he's crying too, salty tears accumulating against the juncture of her neck and shoulder as well, and they pull each other closer, closer.

And she thinks she can believe it, at long last. _Love is strength._


End file.
